Michael Lattanzi created Lattitude Studio South to be a recording haven for any kind of music, and it’s tied together by an array of acoustical treatment products from Auralex in hosting sessions for artists such as Thompson Square, Hunter Hayes, Aerosmith’s Brad Whitford, John Popper & Blues Traveler, and most recently Megadeth.
The studio is located in Leiper’s Fork, TN, an exurban artistic community 30 minutes from downtown Nashville, where Lattanzi moved four years ago from Los Angeles.
“Auralex is completely integral to the way I work,” says Lattanzi, who has collaborated as a producer, engineer, mixer, co-writer and in other capacities with a wide range of artists, including Wyclef Jean, Lauryn Hill, Paul Abdul, Smash Mouth, LL Cool J, Jewel, Wilson Phillips, Steve Vai, Jessica Simpson and others in New York, Los Angeles and Nashville, music centers where he has lived during various phases of a successful career in music production.
He points to the Auralex ProPADs underneath each monitor, which include EVE SC407 and Yamaha NS-10m models (among several other options), as well as Miller & Kreisel MX-350 MK II 350-Watt subs. “I swear by these,” he says. “And under the subs I use the SubDude and GRAMMA v2 pads on the floor. I get total isolation between the speakers and the studio.”
Out in the spacious tracking room, the drum kit rests on a 16-foot by 16-foot riser made of Auralex HoverDecks, with a set of HoverMat pads on top of that. “These keep the kit and the mics around the kit completely isolated from the floor,” he explains. “That’s really helped the drum sound — they sound tight and there’s no resonance through the floor.”
In the control room, Auralex ProPanels attached securely to the walls between the windows keep reflections in check, providing an accurate, reflection-free mixing environment. In the studio, freestanding Auralex ProGOs act as sound-restricting gobos between amplifiers and around vocal microphones.
Lattanzi also uses them in the control room as baffles behind the studio’s three full-sized consoles – a Neve 8078, an SSL SL4000 E/G/G+ and an API 1604 (“I know, I’m crazy,” he laughs) – to deter reflections from the windows between the control room and the studio.
Finally, the control room has Auralex LENRD bass traps in every corner from floor to ceiling. “I would not build a studio without them,” he says. “They give me a very predictable bass response.”
He adds that Auralex provides what every music production professional seeks in a recording environment: acoustical and sonic predictability and consistency: “I want to know that what I’m hearing is the voice, the instrument, the song, not coloration from reflections or resonances. I want to know that what I’m hearing is real, and that’s what Auralex gives me — reality.”
